Extensão - WissKomm- Outreach

Due to my strong connection to Germany's scientific and cultural landscape, which represents an important part of my professional career, the first major outreach projects I was involved with had to do with Germany:  In 2005, together with the Goethe-Institut Porto Alegre I helped organize the exhibition Einstein Returns to South America to celebrate the 100th Anniversary of Einstein's Annus Mirabilis. In 2016 I joined forces with the  DAAD Lektorin Svenja Brünger (DAAD visiting professor) to bring the exhibition Machtworte: Wortgewalt und Bilderwelten bei Luther (Words of Power: The Power of Language and Imagery in Luther) from Jena to Porto Alegre. During this time I had the privilege of being the honorary president of the Goethe Institute in Porto Alegre, a position I held until 2018. As such I was responsible for: 

1. Program supervision: directly overseeing the institute's diverse portfolio of cultural, scientific, and educational teaching programs in the region.

2. Community outreach: spearheading institutional interaction and cultural integration with local public schools to promote German language and culture.

3. Representative duties: I was officially the liaison  with both Brazilian and German authorities (German Consulate in Porto Alegre).

On the academic side, my outreach activities gravitate around two different bodies: translation and on-site activites for the general public. As to what regards the first: I believe it is important to give people access to seminal papers written in German via a direct translation. Besides, I wrote a few articles for the general (non scientific) public in newspapers and magazines. The most extensive one was published in 2015 in the German Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, which was related to the work I am was doing at the time on Complex Network Theory and History. I have also published several articles for undergraduate students in the Revista Brasileira de Ensino de Física (Brazilian Journal of Physics Teaching) before I became its editor from 2008 to 2012. For this journal I translated and commented Einstein's Physik und Realität from 1936 as well as his paper of 1925 on the Bose-Einstein Condensation, as well as articles by Boltzmann and Gödel. 

When it comes to local activities: my colleague Priscilla Paci and I have been coordinating the Semana Acadêmica da Física, a one-week event where speakers are invited to give talks and short courses to undergraduate students. I've also helped my colleague João Telles with the yearly Jornada das Estrelas, an event open to the general public where people get a change to glance at the night sky with telescopes and learn about asterisms, constellations and some other important features not so commonly known. By the way: Jornada das Estrelas (Journey of the Stars) is a play with the name Jornada nas Estrelas (Journey through the Stars) which is how the classic Star Trek TV show is known in Brazil.